As this professor exemplified, academics and emotion have a rocky relationship. As a result, academia is a tough culture in which to talk of faith, hope, and love. Those three words are hard for some academics. It’s a culture that traditionally says paradoxically with great emotion that emotions have no place in the Ivory Tower. Instead,it emotionally tells you that you must–must–be emotionless, cold, distant, impersonal, disengaged, and rational. It’s all encapsulated in the word, “objective.” So, too many academics don’t know what to do with or want having to do with the persons they feel and judge to be a “waste of my time,” “I’ve got better things to do,” the “poor,” the “unprepared,” the “don’t belong.” and the “they’re letting anyone in.” They ignore them, say painful things, belittle them, and do everything they can to weed them out. With that attitude, they are failing the students, as well as themselves. What they don’t want to understand is that not according these students an honorable dignity and disregarding them makes matters only worse. It causes them see themselves as different in a way that devalues them, that strips them of faith in themselves, hope for themselves, lowers their self-esteem and self-confidence. And, as the research shows, lowers their performance levels.

“I understand,” I explained to her, “that when I talk of faith, hope, and love it sounds so alien to a lot of academics. It did to me at first way back in the 1990s. To some, it sounds like being a weak, ineffective, sentimental, ‘hallmarkish’ push over. To still others it’s a rabid invasion of an anti-rational, emotional, and subjective pestilence. But, as Thicht Nhat Hanh said, we human beings ‘inter-are’ creatures who have a hard time flourishing when we feel invisible to, disconnected with, and isolated from others.

“I have found that faith, hope, and love actually augments academia,” I explained, it doesn’t undermine it. The research done by the likes of Rochester’s Ed Deci, Standord’s Carol Dweck, Harvard’s Teresa Amabile, UNC’s Barbara Fredrickson, Harvard’s Daniel Goleman, UC’s Sonja Lyubomirsky, Chicago’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and host of others tell us that faith, hope, and love help create a whole new mind and heart. Daniel Goleman calls it ‘EI– emotional intelligence’ and ‘SI–social intelligence.’ To that I added my own ‘HI–hospitality intelligence’ and ‘KI–kindness intelligence.’ They positively create positive people, positive feelings, positive thoughts, positive experiences, and positive results. Faith in, hope for, and love of are a positive audacity that nourish, that provide the impulse, that infuse the energizing juice to take bold actions, that instill a resiliency, that strengthen self-esteem and self-confidence, that help each student help herself or himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming, and can consequently improve performance.”

“Permit me,” I asked this professor, “to quickly let you in on a few little, big secrets I’ve learned about learning from both educating myself about the latest research findings and decades of experience in the classroom. I’ll just list them and explain later if you wish me to:”

“First, don’t get stuck in sameness. Each day is a new adventure. Each day is unique. Each day is a challenge filled with opportunities and possibilities. You never step into the same class twice, even if the course number is the same. Change is the only constant, every moment, every day, every term. The one thing that never changes that is that the end of the day you, others, and things will be different than they were when the day began. So, you never step into the same class twice, even if the course number is the same. And, you never deal with the same person twice, even if her or his name is the same. Dealing with that change is how we and they learn, grow, and change.

“Second, no one can leave her or his ‘trash’ at the classroom threshold. What occurs outside the classroom and inside each student deeply impacts what goes on inside the classroom. And, if we are truly concerned with what occurs inside the classroom, we must be equally concerned with what goes on outside the classroom and inside each student.”

“Third, as educators, we are in the people business, as much as, if not more, than in the information transmission, skill development, and credentialing business. We have to heed Thomas Edison’s assertion that the mind and heart of people must control what they create. We, therefore, have to insure that we are graduating good people as well as good students who can live the good life as well as secure a good living.”

“Fourth, persuasion and trust and respect always trump authority. Students will listen when they are inspired, not when they are demeaned and scolded. Brute attitudes will be met with subtle or overt brute resistance and intransigence. At best, you’ll get resentful, submitting, or reluctant compliance to get a passing grade, but not dedicated commitment to learning.”

“Fifth, to the question ‘how much faith, hope, and love am I supposed to show?’ There is no metric for them, or for caring, kindness, support and encouragement, for empathy. So, the answer to the question ‘how much faith, hope, and love am I supposed to show,’ is ‘You show and do as much as you can or wish.’ It’s as simple and complicated, as easy and hard, as that.”

“Sixth,, it is wrong to banish discomfort. To paraphrase, a quote I gave you earlier, ‘Teaching begins at the end of your comfort.’ Discomfort is when you learn the most about yourself, others around you, and the crafts of teaching and learning; when you’re always on the move, journeying, never completely satisfied and fulfilled, always on an adventure, always renewing yourself; when you know your best today is never your best since you can be better tomorrow. Discomfort, then. insures that the proverbial grass doesn’t grow under your feet and your stone is constantly rolling preventing a gathering of moss. The paradox occurs when the time will come, then, when you will be comfortable with discomfort.”

“Seventh, there is a toll on having negative attitudes towards students. They throw spontaneity, imagination, and creativity out the window with a resigned ‘what’s the use.’ Excitement devolves into droning on and on rote. It’s becomes like hiking up a steep hill while carrying the weight of a heavy pack on your back. Exhaustion and burn out, the research finds, is not the result of overwork; it is the result of ‘underjoy,’ ‘undepurpose,’ and ‘undermeaning.'” Faith, hope, and love are at the core of resilience and sustainability. They make you into a ‘kindness iconoclast,’ an informed and reflective activist in the service of each student, conscious of the human complexity in the classroom, honoring the dignity of each human being in the classroom, acknowledging the unique of each person, dealing with that complexity and individuality in supportive and encouraging community, walking the lifelong road of innovation, and bringing new realities to the classroom. ”

“Eigth, it’s no fun not being noticed, being rendered invisible, much less feeling disrespected. Your attitude makes a hell of a difference not only you, but on students as well; it exerts a powerful influence on both you and each student; it has an enormous impact on how the day unfolds; and, it’s yours to control.”

“Ninth, each time you see those uplifting angels walking before eat student pronouncing ‘Make way. Make way. Make way for someone created in the image of God,’ you always come back to a mindfulness fraught with awareness, attentiveness, alertness, and otherness. You cannot help to choose to be anyone other than an unconditional devotee of the SLM movement. That image will make a difference in how you see each student, how you listen to each of them, how you feel about and think of each of them, how you behave towards each of them. You’ll see the sacredness, nobility, uniqueness, a unique potential of each student. Unconditional faith, hope, and love rises each day in you to serve them. You will find ways to get each student to believe in, search for, discover, and tap her/his inner uniqueness. It will make a difference in deciding whether each of them should be your top priority. then, you will sruggle to find ways to get to know them in order to tailor yourself to their needs.””

“And finally, Be patient and humble. There’s truth in that warning adage about Rome not being built in a day. Faith, hope, and love require a lot of is called ‘sweat equity.’ They take time and energy. They demand perseverance and endurance. They demand constant strength and courage. There are no magic tricks, no quick solutions, no easy answers, no sure-fire manuals, no guaranteed technology. And, that is scary.”

“Enough for now.”

Louis

To continue this discussion with the professor:

“If you’re telling me I have to love each student unconditionally,” this professor cynically exclaimed, “that’s impossible! Too many students haven’t earned it and don’t deserve it, and I won’t do it!”

“No,” I answered, “faith, hope, and love are emotions. I’m not one to order you around. In fact, I know it would be silly and pointless of me to think I could ‘command’ you to feel that way. Anyone who has been told to ‘cheer up’ in a bad time knows that. Heck, administrators don’t know that you can receive policy statements from on high, for example, about receiving, embracing, and retaining students from now until the proverbial cows come home, but the thinning out “keeper of the gate” or “weeder” mentality and actions are still there and won’t automatically disappear in a puff. I do, however, ask that you suspend your cynicism or resistance for a moment and ‘lend me your ears’ because there’s a value in discussing the role of love in the classroom.”

“I’m saying that from reading thousands of student daily journal entries so many students feel that our classrooms are lions’ dens in which most professors don’t really care about them. I’m talking about how student self-belief has been weakened in those dens. I’m even talking about humiliation heaped upon by those self-appointed ‘guardians’ and ‘weeders.’ I personally know what it is like to be alone, to be lonely, to be a stranger, to go unnoticed, to feel unloved, to feel devalued, to feel unworthy, to hurt within, to have weakened self-esteem and self-confidence. I know how all that is a corrosive and disbelieving “what’s the use” drag on motivation to perform and achieve. I know what that’s all like. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. I know. So, constantly being aware and alert to that, recognizing that, knowing that, and especially remembering that, I don’t do it! That’s all. I….just….don’t….do….it! That’s the whole of my educational philosophy right there. It should be the whole of higher education right there. So, what does love had to do it, with higher education? Everything. What would happen to academia, if we all prioritized to love and nourish each Billy; if we nourished that “I will be there for you” faith and hope and love, and all they embodied; if we did it; if we kept away the selective gate keeping; if we nourished a weeding out of weeding out? If we created a movement, I call SLM: “Students’ Lives Matter” that stood for the unconditional respect, value, sacredness, uniqueness, and worthiness of each student, that shined positive rays of light of lovingkindness, loving awareness, loving attentiveness, loving alertness, and loving mindfulness in the world of both the student and teacher, that generated a genuine smile, a friendly word, a soft encouraging touch, a slight supportive glance. Now, that would be a different academia.”

“I’m saying that the classroom has been stripped of its humanity. It focuses on the outward stuff of subject, skill, testing, grading, etc. It doesn’t focus on the inward driving, motivating, and inspiring stuff of the heart. It isn’t concerned with such questions as ‘Who am I?’ ‘What am I feeling?’ ‘Who do I believe I can become?’ None of that. It has become droll, materialized, ‘thingified,’ as a matter of course (pun intended) for acquiring credentials required by job and status. I’m saying academics have to address the human condition and not just be concerned with the subject matter. I’m saying we have to stop thinking about the class as something monolithic and wrap our hearts around the truth that students bring into the world of the classroom a world of diverse stories containing their different experiences and histories, that the real diversity in the classroom is that it is a gathering of separate, distinct and unique ‘ones.’ I’m saying academics have to learn how to see, listen, and speak simultaneously in universalities and individualities. I’m saying that by ignoring character development, we have left many students unprotected, that the gate keepers and weeders are refusing to search for the potential in people as they could become and are giving up on them because of who they presently are. I’m saying in too many classrooms you can almost hear Toni Morrison say, ‘They don’t love our children.’ At the same time, I’m saying we have control over our internal lives and can choose to disparage or love, to knock down or up-lift, to dishearten or inspire. No one makes you or me do anything without our active or passive permission.”

I went on to tell her that for me faith, hope, and love created a hunger, hunger for purpose and meaning and vision. It gave me a thirst to help a student become a good person simultaneously–not instead of or at the expense of–to becoming a good student who will graduate to live the good life while having a good job. For me, faith, hope, and love are not antithetical with becoming informed and skilled, but they are at the heart (pun intended) of the people serving business we call education. They all–all–are important to the redemptive foundation of SLM. I told her that as I acquired an educational philosophy of unconditional faith, hope, and love for each student, as it entered my bones, it offered beautiful hindsight, insight, and foresight for the intellectual and character up-lifting and up-building of each student. It forged my vision. It wrote my “TEACHER’S OATH.” It inscribed my “TEN COMMANDMENTS OF TEACHING.” It gave me a bridging community “we” sight that filled in the separating and differentiating chasm between “I” and “them” sight. It insisted on always seeing and hearing the angel walking before each student proclaiming, “Make way! Make way! Make way for someone create in the image of God.” It said, “I will not follow anyone’s orders to disrespect any student. No one will coerce me into believing any student is disposable. I will not submit to anyone’s demand that I believe any student is not essential. No one will force me to accept that each student is bereft of a unique potential. No one will convince me to give up on or write the obituary for any student.”

I finished by telling her, “As a result, as I thought and felt differently, over the decades, as I developed a vision of purpose and meaning by which to live, I found real and reasonable ways to do things differently, to merge the traditional with the new into a human wholeness. And, I consequently I jumped out of bed each morning with a “yes,” recited my TEACHER’S OATH, and entered each class each day with great expectations. Rare, very rare, extraordinarily rare, was the time I was disappointed.”

Still more later.

So, I get this message from a mid-western professor criticizing me as being an “impractical, emotional, dreamy eccentric.” I don’t think she meant that as a compliment. Nor was one of her other comments. She asked me one question. It was: “Really! What does love have to do with the classroom.?’

My answer began with “Everything. Let me you an example of the impact of what you call my impractical eccentricity of which I was unaware until this past July. And, I assure you, it was not isolated.”

It was last July 3rd. I had taken my visiting grand-daughter to an ersatz fireworks stand in a Walmart parking lot to get her some sparklers for the 4th. From behind the counter came an exclaiming “Dr. Schmier!” Billy (not his real name) was a student in one of the classes I taught the last semester before my retirement. That would be Fall, 2012. Here, 3 1/2 years later, he says to me, “That was some class. I always think of it. And, I think of you as my mentor. You know what really impressed me?

Before I could offer an answer, he continued with something like: “You saw me and each one of us in that class. I don’t know how you did it, but you made each of us feel important to you; you welcomed each of us in that class no matter what our grades were. That was from the first minute we met you and shook hands at the door on the first day of class and every day during the semester. The ‘getting’ to know ya’ and ‘how it works’ exercises were something else. They sure put us more at ease than any other regular class. And, those daily journals we had to write to you. Wow! I know we all thought at first that was useless busy work, until we realized you actually read every word each of us wrote each day. When someone asked you why you read them, you answered so you could get to know each of us and how you could help us help ourselves become more than we thought we were. Do you now how quickly after that most us were never to busy to write to you because you showed us you were never too busy for any of us. That was something. So, I trusted you and let out a lot I had held in and kept to myself, and let you take me out of my comfort zone with all those hands-on projects and private talks, and show me what I really had in me and how much more was there. But, you know what I remember most?”

“No,” I quietly answered.

“You remember the last three words you said us on the last day of that class after that saying about donuts and holes?”

Before I could answer, he said, “I don’t know how you did it, but we all, all of us, felt not only that you noticed us, but that we each was your favorite student. It sure challenged us. If scared some of us. It made some of us almost fearless. That’s why you were able to make a difference, at least, in my life. You said to us as if you were talking to each of us, ‘I love you.’ In fact, since we were the last class on the last day before you retired, they were last three words of your career. You thought you were summing up that class, but I think you unthinkingly summed your teaching career. I never forgot that. If you could love me, if you could have faith in me, if you could have hope for, I had to find ways to love myself, to believe in myself, to have faith in myself, and to have hope for myself. You helped me to find the guts to go into the unknown and make taking risks comfortable. I’ve used that and those three words in every class since, and think of you a lot. Because of you, love won in all the small moments. Boy, it got me over some rough spots. Anytime I want to stop, I thought of you and went on. And, did it start me out on a great trip. I decided to take a leap and go into AROTC. December, I’m graduating. I’m going to be an officer! Me!! I would never have thought it possible if it wasn’t for you. I’d be honored if you would attend my graduation because I owe it all to you.”

I slowly whispered, “Thank you, But, you owe it all to you. I only helped you look into the right places. It was you who saw what you have never seen before and took the risk to bring it to the surface and use it.”

I paid for the sparklers and gave him my email address for him to send the invitation. If I’m in town, I’ll certainly go.

Yeah, “love won in the small moments.” I like that. It’s a great answer to this professor’s question.

More later.

Louis

Well, having survived Hurricane Hermine’s attempt to smash the house to smithereens and blow us into munchkinland, I return with the last part of my series of reflections on the meaning of Proverbs 4:23 for the classroom.

“Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.”

All of who we are, the way we think, the way we feel, how we react to those around us depends on our feelings and emotions. What happens doesn’t determine what I think, how I feel, or what I do. How I respond to what happens does. Over the years, I came to understand that only I am in control of me. I know I decide how to feel and what to think at any given moment. I know I have the power to keep doubt, anxiety, fear, and apathy from wrapping their hands around me. No one “made me do it.” So, as Oliver Wendell Holmes said, we create the world in which we feel most safe and comfortable. We live there no matter when we are. But, where is that world? The classroom? The library? The archive? The lab? Out in the field? Where?

Every moment, we choose our thoughts; we select our emotions. We live inside our own perspectives and expectations rather than in someone else’s shoes. Yet, within that world, we can choose thoughts and feelings that can be detrimental or beneficial, fearful or fearless, weakening or strengthening, depressing or enthusing, discouraging or encouraging, disabling or enabling, deflating or energizing, dissuading or persuading, disheartening or heartening, The lesson, then, is: the world of the classroom is determined by how we view each student; and, when we change our view of each student–only when we change our view–the world of the classroom will change for us.

So I ask: Do we truly make the classroom the focus of our professional world? Do we consciously make the classroom a caring world where we visibly enact unconditional faith, hope, and love? Do we make every student in that classroom feel special? Do we really accept the dignity, uniqueness, and sacredness of every human being in the classroom? Or, are we in the archive, lab, or the field while being physically in the classroom? Do we just idly stand on the corner watching the “average,” “mediocre” or “poor” passerby’s and come out only when that “good student” comes along? Do we, then, too often actively extol the “good student” on one hand and at best are passively resigned to the “mediocre students” and “poor students” on the other hand? Do so many of us simply perceive far too many of them as “I don’t have time for” or “waste of my time” or “better things to do” or “don’t belong” or “they’re letting anyone in” to be weeded out?

I’ll leave you with this: If you are receptive to the miracles in front of and within you, you will allow awe to drive out disregard to consume your feelings and actions. If we watch over our hearts with diligence,” we can cut through the thick fog of dehumanizing, denigrating, and impersonal label, stereotype, and generalization. Then, we can allow the springs of faith, hope and love to humanize and personalize everyone, including ourselves, and let life flow into the classroom.

“Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.”

Louis